


Duties

by morrezela



Series: The Fairy Tale 'Verse [9]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Arranged Marriage, F/M, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 18:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/738515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fairytale AU: There are certain expectations that are placed upon royalty. Having one’s heart broken beyond repair doesn’t exempt a prince from them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duties

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Unhappily arranged marriage of convenience. Jensen/OFC.
> 
> Reading Staircases, Portraits, Journeys, Hopes, Betrayals, Rescues, Homes and Memories first is advisable for the full impact of the story.
> 
> A/N: When I started writing this as a bingo card challenge, I never expected it to get this long. I also didn’t exactly have the roadmap for happily ever after figured out. And now I do, but it involved that thing that happens to royalty that needed to be addressed.
> 
> I chose to use an OFC in this. I didn’t want there to be pre-established feelings of love or hate for her. I also expanded the role a bit because it felt like I was treating her cheaply if I just used her as a plot device. I wanted a ‘person’ to be there even if it was a broken one that wasn’t all there.
> 
> If you want to skip this chapter because of the non-J2 non-romance, the next installment will be up tonight as well.
> 
> All mistakes you find are my own.

If there was a physical comfort that Jensen had missed the most when his true self was cursed away from him, it was the ability to change into his veldeer form. To some, he supposed, this would seem an odd thing to miss. Surely all the creature comforts of the castle were far more valuable than being able to turn into an actual creature. Others might argue that Jensen should have missed the consoling hugs of his mother or the encouraging pats on his back that his father gave him whenever he felt that he had failed his people by not being the most perfect prince that he could be.

And he had missed all of those things. Truly he had. But there was something about losing a part of one’s basic self so surely and utterly that had always haunted him. Perhaps it was because he had always known that at some point in time he would lose his parents. It was the way of the world that human and veldeer alike grow old and die. It was not the nature of life to have one’s own nature changed by a mystical force.

Still, he knew that his human guards, for all that they adored and revered him, were a bit perplexed as to why Jensen wanted to ‘prance about’ on delicate hooves. They didn’t mean for Jensen to hear them speculate about it, so he never confronted them about their musings. There was no mean spirit in their words, and he could no more explain his desire to them than he could change the course of the tides. He was no philosopher.

Jared’s death had changed Jensen more than he liked to admit. Falling in love with the man had never been a wise idea. Even when Jared had known who and what Jensen was, there was only so far that their relationship could have gone. When Jensen was just another citizen of the kingdom, albeit a powerful one, their relationship had been doubly wrong as far as Jensen was concerned. Deceit was something to be abhorred in such a circumstance. While it was true that Jensen had deceived many while under the curse and had even lied to Jared knowingly, he had done his best not to lead anybody on in a romantic sense.

If Jensen was the philosopher that he was not, he supposed that he could argue that he and Jared had never had that sort of relationship. Attraction was not the same as commitment. There had been a betrayal of friendship, but nothing more.

But if Jensen was the veldeer that his heritage said he was, then he could not hide behind such an excuse. His heart knew better than his head. Even if his intentions had been honorable, Jared was still dead. There was no more breath in that beloved body because Jensen had underestimated Jared’s own heart. It was a fact that he could not change. His last act in their relationship had been one of hurt. He had chosen to deceive Jared and leave him behind in some misguided effort to protect him, and Jared had proven himself to be Jensen’s superior by following after him anyway.

Such things happened in life. Jensen was not a fool to think himself perfect. When practicing lies, the first person who had to believe those lies was one’s self. The problem was that he could not see a day on his horizon where he would not mourn Jared’s loss. The sting of having his parents ripped away from him had never left once during the period of the curse. How could he hope to deny the loss of his beloved for the rest of his existence?

And that was made his heart sore more than anything. Now that Jared was gone, made nothing more than fertile soil for the trees, Jensen could be allowed to love him. If Jared had survived, Jensen would have been allowed to knight him for his valor. Rewards would have been heaped upon him, and Jared would have felt the life of comfort. But love beyond the fraternal would not have been afforded them.

Jensen was still a prince. Jared would have still been common born. Even allowing for Jared’s exceptional devotion and rise in status, Jared would never have been able to bear him children. There was no other direct heir to the throne. Distant relatives couldn’t be trusted to care for Jensen’s people the way that they deserved. The infighting would have been enough to topple the throne let alone the chaos that the politics and pandering that seeking after such a position would bring.

Any person that Jensen chose to be his spouse would also have to dedicate themselves to the throne. While Jared would have done that most heartily, his basic biology would have kept him from fulfilling his duties.

It was a pointless thing to ruminate on for there was no longer any hope of that scenario coming to be. Jared’s passing had long since passed its year mark, and Jensen’s hand was already spoken for in marriage. Not that he or his wife were in the throes of either love or passion with each other. No, they were good allies, exceptional even. But tender love was something that they neither shared nor wished to share with each other.

When Jensen set out to right the curse, he had only been thinking of his father’s kingdom. While he had known that his mother’s people also had to have been under the weight of the curse as well, he hadn’t given their politics much thought.

Retrospect was a poor friend. It always liked to point out the places where one was utterly foolish.

Jensen was still in mourning for his ‘friend who sacrificed himself’ when the messengers from the veldeer forest came. There were five of them in total. They needed no adornments. Their coats were as shining as Jensen’s mother’s was, unmarred by the evil that had crawled under his aunt’s skin.

The messengers told the tale of how their next ruler had been foretold by their prophets on a starry evening. This was always a great time of celebration in his mother’s people, and there had been much dancing save for one.

Jensen’s aunt had been certain of her and her children succeeding her father when his time came to step down. Her sister, after all, had chosen to love and leave after the human king and had borne only one half-breed child. She had assumed that the scrawny, sickly child that had come from her sister’s womb couldn’t possibly hope to rule two nations.

But the prophets had spun a different tale, and Jensen’s aunt had been furious. What love she had for her sister had died under the power of jealousy and greed. She had purposed in her heart to keep the prophecy from coming to pass, but murder would taint the head of any who would seek to claim leadership of the veldeer.

Any good politician had never been swayed by such definite statements, and Jensen’s aunt had sought out any magical means necessary to help her cause. She found her solution in the tree of the water. It was a revered legend and full of magical powers that were best left to the earth. But she was desperate and full of hate. She bound the tree to herself, tainting her own blood along with the sap of the tree.

One could not kill a person who had never been born, so she had cast a spell to erase her sister’s birth. It twisted and morphed, changing far more than the lives and fortunes of those who had known Queen Jenhaia. There were repercussions to the veldeer people that could not be undone, but the purpose of the spell had been fulfilled. It was only Jensen’s mixed power of humanity that had allowed the court sorcerer to keep Jensen from being wiped from the face of the earth as his mother had been.

Once the proper order of the world was restored, the veldeer nation had made certain to send word of Jensen’s ultimate ascension lest any others tried to stop it. With the message of Jensen’s ultimate responsibility to his mother’s people delivered, the time for mourning Jared’s loss had been forcibly cut short. There was work to be done in both kingdoms, and Jensen could ill afford to wait to learn his roles until one of the current rulers became too ill to continue.

The pressure to marry became intense, and Jensen found himself to be detached from the decision entirely. Where once he would have fought and railed against meetings and arrangements and advisors, he now felt only passivity. It was only one more thing that needed to be done for his people. His heart was long dead and buried. Who was he to fight against the bartering of his hand and seed when he had no one to save it for?

That was not to say that he was unconcerned with who he married. A wise ruler must be able to choose a companion with desirable characteristics. More than one country had felt the ravages of scandalous rulers and their devious mates. A business arrangement with clear rules and level heads was what Jensen sought, and that was what he found in the most unlikely place.

He had been visiting his grandfather, learning the ways of his mother’s people, when he had been introduced to one of the ladies of the forest. Galinia was beautiful and fair. Where Jensen’s coat was dappled with the brown spots of his humanity, hers was sprinkled with the golden dots of fairy blood. The heritage was long since diluted, but the gift of the ‘flutterers’ had lived on in her good looks. Galinia was genteel and smart, well versed in the arts and mannerisms of leadership.

It was really too bad for her that her father had been one of the cursed.

In the world that Jensen’s aunt had created, Galinia’s father had wed another. Their marriage had been rife with fighting and accusations. It had been unhappy, and the wife had turned to learning magics as a way of escaping from their marital glen.

They couple had conceived one child – Hartrude. She was clever and sarcastic and defensive. A child born because of a bout of angry sex and lust, she had followed her mother everywhere and learned the crafts of the traveling soothsayers far better than her mother had.

When the curse unraveled, she had lived. Much the same as Jensen’s magical nature had helped to save him from the original curse, her own powers had kept her alive when it reversed. They had a commonality between them that Jensen liked.

Unlike Jensen, Hartrude was sickly in body. Magic may have spared her life, but it was not a healthy one. Her paleness was not jus that of the veldeer, and her thin frame was a hair too thin despite her efforts to eat heartily at the banquet tables. Her status as an outcast was not a formal one. It wasn’t even a conscious one as far as Jensen could tell, but it was still apparent that she had few friends amongst her people.

Hartrude explained that it was at least partly her fault. Too many years spent hiding away in the forest practicing potions while her parents fought had made her unsociable. She had no patience for the awkwardness of building a relationship with those who ‘had a right’ to be in the world when she did not. The ending of the curse had robbed her of her own lover when her magics were not strong enough for the both of them, and she had no ambition to start her life over again.

In retrospect, marrying Hartrude was one of the most defiant acts that Jensen ever committed. Oh, she had the right pedigree. Her father had suitable ranking and her mother was a lady. But more importantly, she had all the qualities in a wife that Jensen wanted. She was able to bear him children. She did not seek nor want his love. They were companionable enough, and she had no political ties that would make her try to sway Jensen’s opinion.

The announcement of his impromptu nuptials at Baron Morgan’s house was only eclipsed by the fact that Jensen strictly forbade any celebration of them. He wished no fireworks of merriment. There would be no parade or flotilla at the docks. Both Hartrude and Jensen had no desire to fake merriment where there was none.

The political advisors that Jensen had chosen were good at their jobs, and they wasted no time in cleaning up the mess Jensen made with his elopement. It was a matter of hours before the bards and announcers were whispering how appropriate it was that the prince who had lead the charge for breaking the curse had turned around and wed one of the ‘orphans’ that the curse had created. It was like a dance, perfectly choreographed and executed to the point where nobody but the very elect knew just how much turmoil Jensen’s choice had caused.

The fact that the people loved him and adored his ‘expressive choice’ in marriage didn’t bother Jensen. Choosing Hartrude had never been about making a statement or being rebellious. It had been about convenience. If the people wanted to see symmetry where there was none, Jensen wasn’t going to stop them.

The matter of children was foremost on both of their minds. Hartrude wanted her legacy before she died, and Jensen needed heirs. While there was friendship between them, the conception was dealt with as efficiently as possible. They had no desire to pretend any more than was strictly necessary.

Or, as Hartrude put it, “It is not so very difficult for you to pretend to be my Ecandar, Jensen. He was tall and broad as are you. But I fear I make a very poor woodsman.”

Jensen didn’t bother correcting her on Jared’s behalf. He may have been a carpenter, but he died a hero. What his profession was in his life didn’t matter, and Jensen avoided speaking Jared’s name as much as possible anyway. The word hurt to utter even after all the time that had passed.

Conception happened faster than Jensen had anticipated but slower than he would have liked. Once would have been ideal being as ‘never’ had never been an option. Hartrude’s already sickly frame became worse throughout the pregnancy. Her thin shoulders appeared almost comical in comparison to the largeness of her belly.

While he held no deep affection towards his wife, Jensen had not once wished her to be in such a state. He spared no expense on physicians and health aides trying to help her, but she continued to decline. It was a sad state of affairs made doubly worse by the fact that Hartrude was more complacent about the decline of her health than Jensen was.

In the evenings, Jensen took to sitting by her bedside. Sometimes he would read the latest news that the couriers brought from the far regions of the kingdom. Sometimes they would discuss politics and Hartrude would correct his pronunciation of certain archaic veldeer words. Other times they would speak of nothing of importance, but always would Hartrude refuse to speak of the children.

The subject of Jensen’s heirs was avoided until the night that it wasn’t. Hartrude had laid upon her bed the same as always, her belly round to the point that Jensen felt pain even looking at it.

“They’ll be here soon,” she had whispered while Jensen was in the middle of regaling her with the crop reports from Eastern Walforstir.

“Yes, they will,” Jensen agreed. With so much weight gain, the doctors had all agreed that Hartrude was having twins. It was common enough amongst veldeer, and not completely unheard of in humans. Jensen would be lying if he claimed that he hadn’t been relieved at the news. An heir was necessary, but two was ideal: the heir and a spare in the case of misfortune following the firstborn.

“I suppose then, that being the pitiful state that I am in, I can admit that I will likely not make it past their birth,” Hartrude raised a hand up to stop Jensen’s automatic protests and assurances. “Do not try to placate me, Jensen. I should never have been born. We both know this, and much as I love them, I do not worry about them being deprived of love as they grow up.”

“You speak as if you are already dead.”

Hartrude laughed and shifted to her side, ever uncomfortable now that the pregnancy was so far along. “I am as good as. I asked the doctors to not speak to you of it. Their great prince of the kingdom already had the inkling of how the story would end, didn’t he?”

Jensen shook his head in denial. “I never meant…”

“Of course you didn’t,” she interrupted with a tiny smile. “Truth be told I didn’t either. If I had the intention of killing myself, death by childbirth wouldn’t have been my first choice. Still, I did make certain decisions that brought me here. I, for example, chose to use the fertility elixir from the Corrida Coast. Twins run… or ran in my family. There was a chance that I would have had them anyway, but I didn’t want to do this twice. I know that you can understand why.”

Hartrude looked down at the thin hands she had clasped over her stomach before continuing with, “But I also could have let them… terminate themselves.”

Jensen looked up sharply at that. “What?”

“When the doctors came, they said that my body couldn’t handle the pregnancy and keep myself in any semblance ofhealth. The mystics they sent after said it was because of both my poor genetics and the amount of energy that I had expended trying to bring Ecandar with me as the world shifted around us. It was either me or the children.”

“I didn’t know,” Jensen murmured.

“Because I told them not to tell you,” Hartrude said. “Our union only came to be because of your need for children.”

“I would never have asked this of you,” Jensen said.

“I know you wouldn’t have, but it was never your choice to make. It was mine. These are my children too. I could have a life without them, but where would that leave us? Or me for that matter? You would never divorce me. Your honor runs too deep for that. I could live in high esteem and wave at all the crowds, but at what cost? I would wake up every day and see pity around me and still know that I’d never come close to the life I would have had with Ecandar. The worst part about it is that I know that having my old life would be wrong because it never was supposed to be. I can’t even hate you for it.”

Denial bubbled up inside of Jensen. He wanted to fight and rail and argue against Hartrude’s fatalistic attitude. It wasn’t wright. It wasn’t okay.

“It isn’t your choice,” Hartrude answered him before he could even open his mouth to speak.

The finality of her words was absolute. She had purposely waited until the last possible minute to tell him so that he couldn’t try to come up with another solution. She had taken any power away from him, absolved him of his responsibility, and Jensen was no carpenter with only his heart leading him to overcome the decision that she made for his own good.

Comfort was something that he needed, so he took to the woods that were nearest the castle. Technically they were part of the grounds that stretched on as far as the eye could see. In any other kingdom they would be groomed, but ever since Jensen’s mother had taken residence in the castle, she had ordered them to be left alone as much as possible. The ending of the curse had taken them from the unnatural, perfectly positioned rows of trees back to the organic, dappled spacing that Jensen remembered from his youth.

It made running through their trunks at full speed a dangerous game for the guards trying to follow him on horseback, but Jensen’s mood didn’t afford him any sympathy to spare them. He would rather be alone than not, and while he was outside the castle, that was not something that was allowed. Outrunning his pursuers, however well-intentioned they were, was his only option if he wanted both solitude and the chance to exercise away his frustrations.

The act of running away was childish, and it was best he get it out of his system now. When the children came, he was going to be a father. Responsibility had always set well with him. He was born to it, but fatherhood was different from helming a nation. The charge of rearing children was a far more daunting one to him than being a leader.

Jensen ran hard and fast through the forest. His mind flickered through a hundred memories and emotions. In the state that he worked himself up into, he wasn’t paying attention to how far he ran. When he found himself at the edge of the castle grounds, he felt a moment of surprise at how far away he had wandered in his torment. He couldn’t even make out the castle from where he was.

The shock that followed after that realization was something worse. Not fifty yards from where he stood was the very specter of Jared. He was bizarrely naked, skin bronzed and hair longer than Jensen had ever seen it. The apparition was so bizarre that for a moment of time Jensen thought it to be real. It even reached out with one enormous hand as its feet moved it forward. But when its mouth moved, forming the name ‘Jensen’ on its lips, no sound issued forth from it.

The lack of noise jarred Jensen from his stupor. He spun on his haunches so agilely that veldeer fawns would be envious. As fast as he had raced into the woods, he doubled his time going back. His mind was playing cruel, heartless tricks on him, but there was enough sanity left in Jensen’s brain to ensure that he could recognize it. The kingdom didn’t need a crazed ruler seeing a dead lover in the forest, and his children didn’t need a father who was unbalanced.

 

No. Jensen was going to head straight back to his chambers to get some rest. When he was done sleeping, he was going to throw himself into the preparations for his coming heirs. He was going to make whatever time Hartrude had left the most comfortable that he could.

And he was never going to visit that particular section of his forest again. Whether that was because of fear or hope of seeing Jared’s specter again was something that Jensen was not going to ruminate upon.


End file.
